Well, sometimes you do need to wear a suit to be taken seriously. It depends on who you're talking to.
A suit does probably mean that someone is used to "uptight" environments and so yeah, you're apprehensive that this guy is going to cause you ass pain and not solve any of your problems. If the consultant is me, then a guarantee you will get over this.
But...a sign of low confidence? That's just your own weird little value judgement and probably itself only points to your own sense of inferiority in front of the guy in the suit. Or, at the very least, is a reaction to the fear that this guy is going to turn out to be a douche.
Nobody is arguing that these crimes are somehow "new" now that they're on the internet. However, the technology DOES present some interesting challenges.
As an example, an American citizen conducting fraud sends his spams via a server in Elbonia. How do we define "jurisdiction" here? An FBI agent would have to jump through his own asshole to interface with Elbonian law enforcement, and they have to be convinced that it's worth their time to convict someone in another country before they will help out. Then there's the language barrier, cultural barriers, complex Elbonian laws that prevent the Elbonian police from giving firewall logs to the FBI, etc.
The barriers to solving the problems brought up by the new technology are NOT technological--they are largely cultural and legal. Or, as you pointed out, the crimes are old, but new technology brought them to the forefront. This proposed second internet is a technical solution and that's why it won't work. We have a long uphill slog if we want to use the existing law enforcement structure to prosecute crimes on the internet, or we need to abandon that idea entirely and try something new (any ideas?)...or even give up the idea of "safety" on the net and accept a given level of risk.
There are many courses of action open to us, and I think we should spend more time talking about the possible ways forward and their impliciations than on how "stupid" law enforcement is.
I don't think the bicycle analogy is very good. The internet is an enabling technology and as it enables certain crimes they become MUCH more prevalent than they used to be. Not necessarily fundamentally different, just easier to carry out. Kiddie porn or fraud are good examples.
I think that laws don't necessarily need to change, but investigators need to be able to accomplish more (notice I didn't say they need more powers). Simply finding the kiddie porn sites is hard enough when the guys know they're being hunted and are hiding from the cops already. Being able to find the bad guys, develop a case, and bring it to prosecution needs to be easier without violating anyone's existing civil rights. I would focus on more hiring, better training, and straightening the paths within DOJ and among law enforcement agencies.
It does if you're thinking long term, which a lot of people don't.
If your starting salary is $85k and you're comparing either going for a 5% raise annually, or just accepting the 10% bonus, then by going after the raise you break ahead after 3 years (if you just consider annual takehome) and after 5 years your cumulative monies are more. Over 10 years it means a difference of ~$130k.
Anyone know of any good career planning sites? How do you do planning in a field as unstable as ours? How concerned should I be about getting huge salary increases and then pricing myself out of the market? Etc.
It's a utilization bonus, and it's a perk--not really an option for us.
However, just about everyone gets the bonus, not everyone gets salary increases every year. So I work to get the raise, not specifically towards the bonus (so far I've gotten both consistently).
This was based on the assumption that we didn't get anything back (that the bonus was not taxed as income in the final estimation). Hey, there are some things I'm good at, and taxes is not one of them:)
As a consultant, you're sort of wading hip-deep in the bullshit but you still have to generate objective stuff. When I give my customer advice, it's generally vendor-neutral and objective...but then you have to advocate it against everyone else's statements and that's where the bullshit comes in.
I find this especially true when the prime has several vendors brought in on an issue and you have to do Vendor Kumite to see whose POV wins out. I remember when a network services vendor and a company that sells routers were trying to gang up on us (the security vendor) and we were pulling stuff out of their own product sheets to throw at them. It's can be challenging and fun but you're right, the bullshit wears on you.
A lot of IT jobs give bonuses (for utilization or meeting SLAs). But bonuses are taxed at the highest rates. So when offered or negotiating bonuses, I find it makes more sense to go for salary increases; you can forgo a 10% bonus for a 5% raise and your takehome is actually more (and the bosses are happier).
This is why when we look at jobs we need to look beyond the salary and deep, deep into the whole benefits package and "what makes you happy."
That's fine, because it rarely matters what you think of me so long as you do your job. As your consultant my job is to help make you successful--I find coming in with that kind of attitude (instead of demanding you kowtow because I have on a tie) defuses most of the friction you might expect when the customer has your attitude, and then we can collaborate to the extent required to get the job done.
This is perhaps an example of those "great social skills," but some might call it "social intelligence." I'm hardly a social butterfly--actually, something of an introvert--but I know how to handle surly know-it-all geeks and this is why I keep getting hired again and again.
The key to your employment, on the other hand, is your technical skills. You picked a field that fits you, which is great...A little social skill would probably help out but it doesn't need to be your bread & butter. We occupy differ niches, is all.
Destroying all life on the planet is pretty easy. Finding and capturing one random guy in an alien culture without leading your personnel into a trap and getting them blown up...not so easy.
That is a really good attitude to have. I, on the other hand, look really good in suits, and I like consulting more than I like programming. To each his own.
Maybe I wasn't clear. When I said above that "Redhat makes money off of support, not licensing," that should have indicated to you that I already understand that Redhat makes money off of support. Then, when I said that I, on the other hand, can get by with CENTOS, that should indicate to you that I don't need support, but then, that's specific to me and doesn't speak to everyone's requirements. Capisce?
I don't think copyright necessitates a middleman. Middlemen are supposed to handle everything ancillary to the production of content...distribution, advertising, arranging access, setting up live performances, etc. They are useful. Yes, with the internet enabling cheap distribution and so forth, you can get away with charging $1 for an album instead of $10--the artist makes the same and consumers are happy. I don't see what any of that has to do with copyright, which basically says "I wrote and produced this album and that authorizes me to charge $1 for it--and prevents ANYONE ELSE from charging for it or distributing it for free."
The fact that artists regularly get hosed in this industry is still not, to me, a valid defense of not paying for content you want to hear. There are tons of indie bands that I support by buying their $5 album from their websites, and there is no label involved. I don't see why anyone who wouldn't gank a $5 promo CD at a show would download the artist's music without paying for it; the idea that "Well, in the one case, you STOLE a CD!" is nonsensical.
You're right, it doesn't:\ Most of the ideas we have to solve copyright problems don't really address the entirety of the issue. I think basically we WANT to foster creativity and vigorous development--that's the bottom line and getting artists paid is just a subordinate good that depends upon that primary good. So there are two forks:
1. We want to enable development by allowing collaboration (fair use), and 2. We need to remove financial requirements that lead to "hoarding"
Creative Commons for instance makes it easier for you to share your work, but doesn't really help you profit from it. The GPL, on which I am definitely not an expert, seems to enable development but not sales (Redhat, for instance, seems to make money off of support versus licensing--but again, I'm no expert) while not explicitly preventing them. For instance I have yet to figure out why I would ever use Redhat when I can just deploy CENTOS, but then I don't run a massive enterprise network.
I keep coming back to patronage...software seems to have a much more clearly defined financial aspect than fine art; at least, few people appreciate good code as they do good art. What would patronage look like in the software development world? What would it produce? I feel like software that addressed pressing needs in really elegant ways would be a goal of this--like the operating system for the OLPC project, perhaps.
What do you think will help untangle all this mess?
Straw man. Artists have to eat just like everyone else, and if you don't make it possible for them to support themselves with their art, then they will support themselves by digging ditches (waiting tables, parking cars, whatever). You have a pretty naive view of how much "free time" most people have.
It would be fallacious, which is why I did not argue it. We're basically in agreement here; in the absence of patronage (which is preferable--even state patronage, if there are no private patrons) we still need some system by which artists can pursue their art and still eat.
Where we hit wrinkles in this line of reasoning is where copyright supports the recording and distribution agency far more than the artist. The creative people, whom we pay in order to encourage and enable, don't really benefit from the current system as much as I'd like.
So if I kill your family, I'm only depriving you of the presence of some complicated, ambulatory tubes, not the love and affection of people you care about, because they're not "the same thing."
Hey, reductionism ad absurdio can be amusing! Keep it up.
Not only "not nice." If people cannot make money from their creative work, then they will find another job. Everybody wants the latest song by $ARTIST but they don't realize that if $ARTIST has to choose between songwriting and eating, paying rent, etc. then he probably will do something else.
I've read a bunch of your posts and I like what you have to say, but this is wrong. Funny, but wrong.
You have a hidden assumption that evolution or other means of improvement (perhaps self-improvement, social Darwinism, who knows?) are "inspiring" because they're the only ways to make us "better." No dice. We've been through this before.
There's nothing "inspiring" about evolution. Those are just your personal judgement calls and subjective opinions: We're "better" than the apes and in 1000 years our descendents will be "better" than us. The next step is, inevitably, "Hey, why not make the NEXT generation that much better?" It always ends poorly. Do we have to go down this road again or are people going to learn at some point?
No. The configuration of the office system allows and invites this kind of abuse. Secure network design would mitigate a lot of these issues, but it requires security to be a priority.
Generally speaking, "IT guys" know nothing about security and get quite belligerent when you try to tell them how to do their jobs (e.g. advising them to institute allow-by-exception policies). It's the techs and the CIOs more than the CFOs who make this a problem.
economic prosperity and theism are inversely related
Absolute bullshit and neoconservative propaganda. Most of the major trading networks of the past 200 years have been run by "theists." Having them run by people who do simply care more for money than anything else is a fairly recent invention, historically.
Intriguing. I would like to know more, can you recommend any reading? It looks as if you have several phone numbers and they all point to your same phone...now that would be worth setting up. How did you buy phone numbers elsewhere?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, sometimes you do need to wear a suit to be taken seriously. It depends on who you're talking to.
A suit does probably mean that someone is used to "uptight" environments and so yeah, you're apprehensive that this guy is going to cause you ass pain and not solve any of your problems. If the consultant is me, then a guarantee you will get over this.
But...a sign of low confidence? That's just your own weird little value judgement and probably itself only points to your own sense of inferiority in front of the guy in the suit. Or, at the very least, is a reaction to the fear that this guy is going to turn out to be a douche.
Nobody is arguing that these crimes are somehow "new" now that they're on the internet.
However, the technology DOES present some interesting challenges.
As an example, an American citizen conducting fraud sends his spams via a server in Elbonia. How do we define "jurisdiction" here? An FBI agent would have to jump through his own asshole to interface with Elbonian law enforcement, and they have to be convinced that it's worth their time to convict someone in another country before they will help out. Then there's the language barrier, cultural barriers, complex Elbonian laws that prevent the Elbonian police from giving firewall logs to the FBI, etc.
The barriers to solving the problems brought up by the new technology are NOT technological--they are largely cultural and legal. Or, as you pointed out, the crimes are old, but new technology brought them to the forefront. This proposed second internet is a technical solution and that's why it won't work. We have a long uphill slog if we want to use the existing law enforcement structure to prosecute crimes on the internet, or we need to abandon that idea entirely and try something new (any ideas?)...or even give up the idea of "safety" on the net and accept a given level of risk.
There are many courses of action open to us, and I think we should spend more time talking about the possible ways forward and their impliciations than on how "stupid" law enforcement is.
You mean when you want to borrow one to help you pick up chicks?
Or to remind you why you don't want kids?
This idea has serious potential...
I don't think the bicycle analogy is very good.
The internet is an enabling technology and as it enables certain crimes they become MUCH more prevalent than they used to be. Not necessarily fundamentally different, just easier to carry out. Kiddie porn or fraud are good examples.
I think that laws don't necessarily need to change, but investigators need to be able to accomplish more (notice I didn't say they need more powers). Simply finding the kiddie porn sites is hard enough when the guys know they're being hunted and are hiding from the cops already. Being able to find the bad guys, develop a case, and bring it to prosecution needs to be easier without violating anyone's existing civil rights. I would focus on more hiring, better training, and straightening the paths within DOJ and among law enforcement agencies.
It does if you're thinking long term, which a lot of people don't.
If your starting salary is $85k and you're comparing either going for a 5% raise annually, or just accepting the 10% bonus, then by going after the raise you break ahead after 3 years (if you just consider annual takehome) and after 5 years your cumulative monies are more. Over 10 years it means a difference of ~$130k.
Anyone know of any good career planning sites? How do you do planning in a field as unstable as ours? How concerned should I be about getting huge salary increases and then pricing myself out of the market? Etc.
It's a utilization bonus, and it's a perk--not really an option for us.
:)
However, just about everyone gets the bonus, not everyone gets salary increases every year. So I work to get the raise, not specifically towards the bonus (so far I've gotten both consistently).
This was based on the assumption that we didn't get anything back (that the bonus was not taxed as income in the final estimation). Hey, there are some things I'm good at, and taxes is not one of them
As a consultant, you're sort of wading hip-deep in the bullshit but you still have to generate objective stuff. When I give my customer advice, it's generally vendor-neutral and objective...but then you have to advocate it against everyone else's statements and that's where the bullshit comes in.
I find this especially true when the prime has several vendors brought in on an issue and you have to do Vendor Kumite to see whose POV wins out. I remember when a network services vendor and a company that sells routers were trying to gang up on us (the security vendor) and we were pulling stuff out of their own product sheets to throw at them. It's can be challenging and fun but you're right, the bullshit wears on you.
There's a corollary to that.
A lot of IT jobs give bonuses (for utilization or meeting SLAs). But bonuses are taxed at the highest rates. So when offered or negotiating bonuses, I find it makes more sense to go for salary increases; you can forgo a 10% bonus for a 5% raise and your takehome is actually more (and the bosses are happier).
This is why when we look at jobs we need to look beyond the salary and deep, deep into the whole benefits package and "what makes you happy."
That's why they're so great!
That's fine, because it rarely matters what you think of me so long as you do your job. As your consultant my job is to help make you successful--I find coming in with that kind of attitude (instead of demanding you kowtow because I have on a tie) defuses most of the friction you might expect when the customer has your attitude, and then we can collaborate to the extent required to get the job done.
This is perhaps an example of those "great social skills," but some might call it "social intelligence." I'm hardly a social butterfly--actually, something of an introvert--but I know how to handle surly know-it-all geeks and this is why I keep getting hired again and again.
The key to your employment, on the other hand, is your technical skills. You picked a field that fits you, which is great...A little social skill would probably help out but it doesn't need to be your bread & butter. We occupy differ niches, is all.
Destroying all life on the planet is pretty easy. Finding and capturing one random guy in an alien culture without leading your personnel into a trap and getting them blown up...not so easy.
That is a really good attitude to have. I, on the other hand, look really good in suits, and I like consulting more than I like programming. To each his own.
Maybe I wasn't clear. When I said above that "Redhat makes money off of support, not licensing," that should have indicated to you that I already understand that Redhat makes money off of support. Then, when I said that I, on the other hand, can get by with CENTOS, that should indicate to you that I don't need support, but then, that's specific to me and doesn't speak to everyone's requirements. Capisce?
It does, but nominations by people who fail to explain/demonstrate why they think the analogy fails are summarily ignored.
I don't think copyright necessitates a middleman. Middlemen are supposed to handle everything ancillary to the production of content...distribution, advertising, arranging access, setting up live performances, etc. They are useful. Yes, with the internet enabling cheap distribution and so forth, you can get away with charging $1 for an album instead of $10--the artist makes the same and consumers are happy. I don't see what any of that has to do with copyright, which basically says "I wrote and produced this album and that authorizes me to charge $1 for it--and prevents ANYONE ELSE from charging for it or distributing it for free."
The fact that artists regularly get hosed in this industry is still not, to me, a valid defense of not paying for content you want to hear. There are tons of indie bands that I support by buying their $5 album from their websites, and there is no label involved. I don't see why anyone who wouldn't gank a $5 promo CD at a show would download the artist's music without paying for it; the idea that "Well, in the one case, you STOLE a CD!" is nonsensical.
You're right, it doesn't :\ Most of the ideas we have to solve copyright problems don't really address the entirety of the issue. I think basically we WANT to foster creativity and vigorous development--that's the bottom line and getting artists paid is just a subordinate good that depends upon that primary good. So there are two forks:
1. We want to enable development by allowing collaboration (fair use), and
2. We need to remove financial requirements that lead to "hoarding"
Creative Commons for instance makes it easier for you to share your work, but doesn't really help you profit from it. The GPL, on which I am definitely not an expert, seems to enable development but not sales (Redhat, for instance, seems to make money off of support versus licensing--but again, I'm no expert) while not explicitly preventing them. For instance I have yet to figure out why I would ever use Redhat when I can just deploy CENTOS, but then I don't run a massive enterprise network.
I keep coming back to patronage...software seems to have a much more clearly defined financial aspect than fine art; at least, few people appreciate good code as they do good art. What would patronage look like in the software development world? What would it produce? I feel like software that addressed pressing needs in really elegant ways would be a goal of this--like the operating system for the OLPC project, perhaps.
What do you think will help untangle all this mess?
Repeat to yourself "It's just a show."
You should really just relax.
Straw man. Artists have to eat just like everyone else, and if you don't make it possible for them to support themselves with their art, then they will support themselves by digging ditches (waiting tables, parking cars, whatever). You have a pretty naive view of how much "free time" most people have.
It would be fallacious, which is why I did not argue it.
We're basically in agreement here; in the absence of patronage (which is preferable--even state patronage, if there are no private patrons) we still need some system by which artists can pursue their art and still eat.
Where we hit wrinkles in this line of reasoning is where copyright supports the recording and distribution agency far more than the artist. The creative people, whom we pay in order to encourage and enable, don't really benefit from the current system as much as I'd like.
So if I kill your family, I'm only depriving you of the presence of some complicated, ambulatory tubes, not the love and affection of people you care about, because they're not "the same thing."
Hey, reductionism ad absurdio can be amusing! Keep it up.
Not only "not nice." If people cannot make money from their creative work, then they will find another job. Everybody wants the latest song by $ARTIST but they don't realize that if $ARTIST has to choose between songwriting and eating, paying rent, etc. then he probably will do something else.
I've read a bunch of your posts and I like what you have to say, but this is wrong. Funny, but wrong.
You have a hidden assumption that evolution or other means of improvement (perhaps self-improvement, social Darwinism, who knows?) are "inspiring" because they're the only ways to make us "better." No dice. We've been through this before.
There's nothing "inspiring" about evolution. Those are just your personal judgement calls and subjective opinions: We're "better" than the apes and in 1000 years our descendents will be "better" than us. The next step is, inevitably, "Hey, why not make the NEXT generation that much better?" It always ends poorly. Do we have to go down this road again or are people going to learn at some point?
No. The configuration of the office system allows and invites this kind of abuse. Secure network design would mitigate a lot of these issues, but it requires security to be a priority.
Generally speaking, "IT guys" know nothing about security and get quite belligerent when you try to tell them how to do their jobs (e.g. advising them to institute allow-by-exception policies). It's the techs and the CIOs more than the CFOs who make this a problem.
economic prosperity and theism are inversely related
Absolute bullshit and neoconservative propaganda.
Most of the major trading networks of the past 200 years have been run by "theists." Having them run by people who do simply care more for money than anything else is a fairly recent invention, historically.
Intriguing. I would like to know more, can you recommend any reading?
It looks as if you have several phone numbers and they all point to your same phone...now that would be worth setting up. How did you buy phone numbers elsewhere?